The present invention is related to accessing the Internet, and more particularly to a method for creating and managing bookmarks which provide search and organizational elements within a bookmark database.
The Internet and World Wide Web provide a wealth of information on any subject. Most people with access to the Internet rely on it for news, stock information, research, hobbies, and other information they seek, such as matrimony and other personal issues. In terms of Internet technology, advancements in different areas of communication have grown at a rapid pace. Such advancements include e-mail, discussion boards and forums, chatting, instant messaging, voice over IP, RSS, Podcasts, etc. Hardware advancements include faster PCs, networking speeds and standards, faster ISP services, etc. Software advancement includes applications based on Flash, Java, XML, etc. Browser advancements include more security, more customization, tabbed browsing, more available plug-ins, etc. However, one area that has been overlooked is advances in bookmarks.
Since information on the internet can be constantly updated or changed, information may not always be permanently or persistently available and may be difficult to capture or store. To address this difficulty, users often capture information on the internet via screenshots. Screenshots portray an exact image of what the user is viewing. Screenshots can also be useful in capturing a snapshot of information, particularly information that may have been provided or accessed from a database. However, the screenshot may be limited to the user's display size (which is usually smaller than most articles). Screenshots do not necessarily store any searchable text and therefore are not easily searchable. Capturing information through a screenshot does not necessarily allow a user to copy/paste text from it either. Also, the saving of screenshots is not effectively integrated in the browser and thus require the user to manually manage creating an image file from the screenshot, naming it, and saving it under categorized folders for further retrieval. Further, information, saved in a screenshot may be effectively updated or changed, and the screenshot is not able to verify such updates and changes. These steps make it very cumbersome to user screenshots to capture information online, thus limiting the usefulness and effectiveness of screenshots as a tool to capture, preserve, share, and manage internet-based information and content.
Cutting and pasting text and pictures from web pages into word processing documents is another way of saving information. This method is one of the most common way users store and capture information from the internet. By cutting and pasting pictures and text, users save such information on their own computers. However, this method may destroy the formatting on the original webpage. Often, the word processor uses up computer resources (such as RAM and hard-drive space). Many cut and paste entries also copy unnecessary tables and script which makes it very difficult to have the information easily readable and useful.
Users may also choose to use the browser's “Save” functionality to save a webpage. Although this method is fairly easy, it also takes up hard-drive resources by saving every single picture of the webpage (often including unwanted advertisements and content, menus, etc) and retaining the original links by mapping them to directories on the computer. This method is resource intensive and results in the collection of vast amounts of information that may be unnecessary. Also, this “Save” functionality may not be very accurate in pages with scripts because some references in these scripts that rely on server-side processing cannot be accessed by the client side browser for later execution, resulting in missing information when saved. Since the “Save” functionality tries to retain the structure of the website, any changes the user would do to sort and organize these downloaded files/folders may potentially break the link structures of saved pages potentially “losing” important information. These factors can make the “Save” functionality a last resort due to the difficulty of organization, the inaccuracy in capturing information, and the demand in hard-drive space.
Printing is another way in which information can be captured from the internet. Printing captures information from the internet, but creates a non-digital version of the information. Printing allows for users to mark up information and file it easily and also have it accessible when not being connected to the internet. However, not having a digital copy has a lot of drawbacks in terms of being able to easily and effectively utilize the information in subsequent research and other material compilation. There are other drawbacks to printing as well. It is not always feasible to print material off the web. Printing files, that are hundreds of pages long, wastes ink and paper. Lot of portal sites and complex web pages are not very printer-friendly as well and may not be formatted to allow easy printing. Also, keeping a hard-copy of information captured online can be difficult in terms of filing and accessing for the future.
Bookmarks are a common but ineffective way to capture information online. As used herein, a bookmark is a pointer acting as a reference or navigation element to a document or to a section of or location within a document, that automatically brings the referred information to the user when the navigation element is selected. This automatic functionality is part of a browser, or other software application within which the document is being viewed. Bookmarks are not limited to HTML or the web, but may be used in almost any electronic media.
Bookmarks today have not changed much over the years as information contained in a bookmark still includes only a single line of text that holds a URL, possibly associated with the title of the bookmarked document (either extracted from the page being viewed or entered by the user). No element of nor content from the body of the document is present in the bookmark. When a bookmarked web page gets taken off-line or gets updated, the user may lose information which was meant to be captured, since revisiting the URL may return an updated page or a non-existing page error. Furthermore, web-sites often undergo maintenance and restructuring rendering bookmarks possibly no longer relevant or useful. Bookmarked pages are also not easily searchable, and users have to manually access each bookmarked page to search them. Another problematic aspect about bookmarks is that when categorized, bookmarks use folders based on a very basic user interface (In the user interface, users are limited to the file and folder aspects of the underlying operating system with limited drag-and-drop functionality).
In addition, for a user to have a similar web experience on different PCs or internet-enabled devices (including wireless), it is important that users be able to utilize previously identified bookmarks. Unfortunately, bookmarks are also not easily portable. There are websites that allow you to store URLs online, but this only lets a user use the URLs without providing a common interface of bookmark features. Other shortcomings of bookmarks are with dynamically generated web-pages. Internet forms that provide receipts and pages that access data from different databases general have no static address that they can be accessed at. Without knowing, users try to capture such pages through bookmarks only to revisit those bookmarks and receive errors or the parent pages loosing valuable information. All these reasons and more make bookmarks an ineffective way to capture and utilize information available on the internet.
Since more users rely on the internet in their daily lives, it is important that they have a better ability to manage information they have gathered. It is also necessary that there are easier ways for users to utilize the information they have gathered by being able to access, search, share, rate this information and integrate this in current internet technologies.